The Gorge is my Gym

Good morning!

You know what? Sleeping in is something special when you only get to do it on a no-wind, no-new-snow day. I slept 10 hours last night, and it felt great.

If you’re headed to Timberline today, you’re probably already gone, but it’s going to be warm and sunny, so wax warm. If you’re missing Meadows, they reopen Saturday and Sunday for bikini skiing on the last two days of the their season!

Today’s wind forecast won’t make windsurfers and kiters happy, but if you’re a fisherman, a standup paddler, or if you just want to leave the house without using an entire can of aqua-net on your hair, today is for you. No wind. Same goes for tomorrow: no wind. At this point, it’s not looking like we’ll see much wind this weekend, so the next few days are looking like road biking paradise!

If you’re a mountain biker and you haven’t ridden Post this week, you must go. It’s perfect, and that means the Post and Pint ride is on for tonight. Meet at Dirty Fingers at 5:30, take a lap around Post Canyon, and claim your reward at the shop afterwards. Also tonight is a very cool movie: Follow me, a hi-def mountain bike film at Andrew’s on the big screen. Showtimes are 6 and 7:30pm.

Coming up this Saturday is something totally different: It’s the annual open house at The Dalles Rifle and Pistol Club on Saturday. If I weren’t working at the mountain, I’d be there, but since I can’t go, you should. There’s free ammo, free hot dogs, free diet coke and cool people including my friend Phil. Go check it out!

Have a great day!

Temira

Good morning!

First off, Larry Spellman of the Hood River Weather website has asked me to ask you to vote in his poll on the upcoming library district vote. The poll is a little ways down the page, to the right of the rainfall statistics. If you haven’t visited Larry’s website, you’re missing out. It’s here:

http://webpages.charter.net/hoodriverweather/weather.htm

If you’re headed up to Mt. Hood today, you’re headed for a gorgeous day on the slopes. It was right around freezing last night, so the snow should be starting to corn up today for some fun spring skiing in the sunshine. Honestly, I’d wait until tomorrow if you want to ski, because it’s probably still a bit sticky today after the new snow yesterday. If you want it, get it early, because it’s going to be warm and sunny up there today, and it’s going to turn to slop!

On the river, your best chance for wind is this morning before high pressure fills in. The early gradient was at .12, so we’ll se 20-24 early at Stevenson and in the Corridor, fading to 16-19 by midday and 10ish this evening for the sailboat races. High pressure fills across the northwest tomorrow and Friday for very light wind both days.

The nice thing about the high pressure system is that we’re going to see our first taste of summer starting tomorrow, which means you’re actually going to have to water your garden for the first time this year! Temperatures climb into the upper seventies on Thursday, right around 80 on Friday and should climb into the low eighties on the weekend.

That bodes well for biking both on the road and on the trails. Post Canyon was near-perfect yesterday, which means that Syncline’s good, Hospital’s good, Nestor’s good, and Surveyor’s from Shell Rock down will be good as well. Upper surveyor’s, especially the section along the 44 road, is still buried in 2 to 3 feet of snow, so wait a bit before trying to ride that trail or you’ll end up like Jackie and Jim: wet, muddy, cold and unhappy (they’re not like that most of the time… just after hike-a-bike through snowbanks).

If you’re a boater, the Hood’s at 4 ft, the White Salmon’s at 3.6ft, the Wind River’s at 595cfs, and the Little White’s at 610cfs. I wanna be a boater to. This is the summer to learn!

That’s it for today. Have a frickin’ awesome day today. Yay sunshine!